Saturday, April 30, 2011

We all belong

Day 4: The Breakfast Club

Today is Saturday. I am sitting in Saturday detention. All the work I have requires a scientific calculater, and since I couldn't find my purse, and since the business classes apparently don't use the wildly important logarithm and ln functions I'm sitting on my hands with a dinky OfficeMax calsumader trying to rewrite each expression as a single natural logarithm without the LOG or ln buttons. Shiny. The real problem here is not the math, which I'm sure if I could concentrate I would probably find that for part of the assignment I don't really need a calculator, the problem here is the events leading up to my current bodily occupation.
I slept through dinner last night, in fact I slept until about 6:15 this morning. So when I woke up I basically decided NOT to go to this detention. My VP has told me multiple times to call myself in if I'm ever "sick" just so he wouldn't have to punish me with extra Saturdays. I was laying in bed thinking about this and trying to decide when the best time to call would be when I heard Chewbacca bellow his familiar wookie calls. My mother had texted me wondering if I had a detention, and, inexplicably, I said yes. I roll out of bed, get ready, and text her back asking if we can stop and get something to eat. Sometime later, I pull into McDonald's, the bane of my mother's existence, and get in the far line, a poor decision.
-Side Note- Where do I begin to explain my mother? For the moment I'll just say that out in public she gets this strange idea that everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, is out to get her, literally driving because they know that she too is out at that exact moment, and relish the possibility of ruining her day.
Back at the ranch, my mother sees a woman pull into the other line and she freaks because now she will be served before us. My mother is panicking because if I'm late to my Saturday, they won't let me in when I know for a fact that they wait for at least 15 minutes before moving back to the rooms. She will hear none of this. This woman, this McDonald's, I have stolen a precious hour, more like 30 minutes, from her day. Oh God, the work she could have accomplished if she only had 30 more minutes.
-Another Side Note- I think subconsciously my mother hates that McDonald's, and Chillicothe in general, because the site where the restaurant was built used to be a church. A church where we held my sister's funeral.You look outside the northern windows and you can see the place where three generations of my family are buried. Every time she takes me to school, there they are, her father, her brother, and her 3rd daughter. For me it's a constant reminder of the effect unresolved grief has on a family, for her I don't know what it means. Maybe nothing. Sometimes I think about Leah. I think about how my family would be different had she survived. Would my parents have divorced? Where would we be? Would my brothers have been born? I think about her fragile, little bones, her weak heart and lungs crushed by the earth bearing down on the cheap coffin, the only thing they could afford. I have to move on now because crying in front of the Breakfast Club would be unforgettably embarrassing.
Back at the ranch, once I get my food I attempt to zoom out of the place while my mother continues to bitch about the set up of the drive thru. I make a California stop hoping I could make a break for it in the gap in front of me and she starts screaming about the stop sign. Cue an awkwardly positioned stop, dirty looks from other drives and a headache and embarrassment for me. Distraught with the whole morning I leave the car and forget my phone. One helluva morning if I do say so myself. At this point the whole day is labeled Fuck It.
I now have 40 minutes left of this detention. I've got two girls I know and like; three I don't know, but probably don't like; two freshmen, a ginger jock who compared me to Velma (hurr hurr) and an apparent scene kid; the brother of my sister's friend; and the two chaperones, the business and consumer ed teacher and the sub everyone hates. I call him Grumpy. He's quite socially awkward, but the man's got a heart of gold. Since I spend so much time in Saturday detention and in-school suspension, I spend a lot of time with him. Because I'm kind, he talks to me, and if I'm talking I'm not alone in my own head, which is always a good thing.
Damn, this post on hard copy is already almost 3 pages, and I haven't even written about dreams yet.

This dream is only the last section of a larger, longer, stranger dream:

-Spoilers for Mass Effect 2-

I was Commander Shepard and I was returning home to Earth to visit my family before embarking on the suicide mission to the Collector base in the galactic core. My mom's a horticulturist, she loves plants, so I brought her an alien plant. I had it potted in a common adobe pot, but instead of soil the plant lived in sand. Just one little stalk poked out. I remember putting the plant on the window sill above my Grandma's kitchen sink while talking to my mother. We were arguing about something, I think about my career choice, and I decided not to tell her that I probably wouldn't see her again.


In conclusion, all of these posts make it seem like I've got a really strained relationship with my mom. Lulz. Sorry Person-I-hung-up-on-because-I-was-mad-and-depressed-and-feeling-sick.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Basement Feelings

A lot of the dreams I have are very vivid and follow some sort of logical story. A lot of them are nightmares. I wake up upset and anxious, some even ruin my whole day. Most of the time when I have a nightmare it's because, for some reason, I get over heated in my sleep. I wake up sweating, my clothes damp. This just started this year and I'm not really sure why.


This dream I awoke from crying:


Something was happening to the world. I suppose some sort of disaster was on it's way, a meteor, a pole shift, something like that. The whole place was up in arms, there were riots and mass hysteria. I was sitting on my roof, we didn't have any power. The sun was setting and I remember the sky was orange, but not orange because of the sun. My mother was sitting at my kitchen table and she was typing each of my brothers, my sister, and me a letter on an old-fashioned typewriter. Final goodbyes, a futile gesture of love before we all died a horrible death.


Day 3: Guilt

I have so much to feel guilty for. I don't even know where to begin. Backwards, forwards? Where does one guilt end and the next begin? Some things I've done I'll remember for the rest of my life. Things I did in the 4th grade for christ's sake. It's sick. And the older I get the worse the crimes committed become. The more things I learn I can do to people. The worse I feel. The question is, what do you feel guilty for?

In conclusion, Anna is having a horrible spring break and down comforters are really warm.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

...

Day 2: My mother


Last Sunday my mother called me to make sure that I didn't make plans on Wednesday, today, so that we could go out and do something together. I thought that we would be going out in the evening so I didn't bother going to bed early. In fact I probably fell asleep around 8 AM this morning. At about 2:30PM she comes in to my room angry that I'm still asleep and that my phone was off (I forgot to charge it.) She says we can't get my license if I'm not ready soon. I say it's fine, I had remembered that I hadn't thrown my clothes in the dryer last night because I thought I'd have time in the afternoon, so obviously I wasn't going to be ready anytime soon. She then says that she wants to be back at her place by 4 so that she's back in time to see her boyfriend.
What the fuck happened to us going out together? I was really looking forward to going out with her because she and I haven't done that in a while. One more disappointment to add to this shitty Spring Break. So I've been sitting in my basement for the last 7 hours getting more and more depressed and more and more angry about this.

In conclusion: Bored, angry, and depressed is no way to go through life, son.

Butcher Bradley

This guy I know, Butcher Bradley, won't post my dreams even though he specifically asked me to share some for his blog. I suppose it's because my dreams are more interesting than his and that would emasculate his dreams. I'll be posting the coherent dreams I have here, as well as everyday thoughts. I've never blogged before, other than the occasional post on the modern relic Myspace some years ago. The mental illness still applies of course. 


Day 1: Listening

Something I've found to be difficult to come by is a person who really listens.
There's a scene in the film Fight Club where the Narrator is explaining to Marla why he fakes terminal illnesses in support group meetings. He says that when people think you're dying, they really listen to you, rather than waiting for their turn to speak.
All too often I get that feeling from the way someone's body moves the air or how they are looking, or not looking at me while I'm talking.
Recently I had a close personal friend of mine, a teacher, talk at me about my issues and why I'm failing so wonderfully in school. She wouldn't stop even for a moment to let me explain myself. This person has always been on my side and looked for the best in me, but that doesn't stop her from being judgmental. I know my faults, I know why I fail, but at this point it really doesn't matter.
It had been a long and taxing day when this little conversation transpired, and when she dropped me off at home after an hour's worth of driving and talking, I went to my room and completely lost it. My only relief was a friend who called me up on Skype and listened to my desperate, exhausted weeping until I fell asleep. I'm sure that he didn't know what to say about my night but it felt good to just have someone listen rather than wait for his turn to speak.

In conclusion, Butcher Bradley hates me forever and Fight Club's da best.